Testing T invariance in the interaction of slow neutrons with aligned nuclei

Abstract

The study of five-fold (P even, T odd) correlation in the interaction of slow polarized neutrons with aligned nuclei is a possible way of testing the time reversal invariance due to the expected enhancement of T violating effects in compound resonances. Possible nuclear targets are discussed which can be aligned both dynamically as well as by the ‘brute force’ method at low temperature. A statistical estimation is performed of the five-fold correlation for low lying p wave compound resonances of the 121Sb, 123Sb and 127I nuclei. It is shown that a significant improvement can be achieved for the bound on the intensity of the fundamental parity conserving time violating (PCTV) interaction.